Imre Lakatos

Imre Lakatos was born Imre Lipsitz in 1922 in Debrecen, Hungary, into a Jewish family. He earned a degree in mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Debrecen in 1944. During the German occupation of Hungary that year he joined a resistance group, and he changed his name. After the war he worked in the education ministry, but in 1950 he was arrested by the communist government and spent three years in prison. He later worked as a translator of mathematics books. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 he fled to Vienna and then to England, where he studied at Cambridge and in 1960 joined the London School of Economics, working alongside Karl Popper. His Proofs and Refutations, written as a classroom dialogue, argues that mathematics develops through the criticism of attempted proofs and counterexamples. In the philosophy of science he proposed that scientists work within 'research programmes', judged by whether they lead to new discoveries over time rather than by single tests. He died in London in 1974.

Imre Lakatos is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Born into a Hungarian-Jewish family; his adult beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia